


paper cranes

by TheBookDinosaur



Series: andromeda tonks [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6501040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The sunset outside the living room window is beautiful. It’s mostly yellow tonight. I wish you could see it with me. I don’t think we appreciated sunsets enough.</i> // or: Andromeda Tonks, after she lost everything</p>
            </blockquote>





	paper cranes

**1**  
_“Hello!_ ” she says cheerfully to the boy on the train. She nearly bumped into him, and caught herself just in time to avoid tripping over his trunk and falling onto the floor. Her owl hoots at her unhappily. “Sorry about that,” she says, and would have gone on, except – he’s wearing muggle clothes, and looking at her owl with an expression of awe on his face, and that tells her everything that she needs to know.

“I’m Edward,” he offers. “Everyone calls me Ted.” He falters at the way her face has suddenly gone cold, at the way she’s trying to compose herself and glare at him like only an eleven-year-old can. 

“I really couldn’t care less,” Andromeda says, and turns around to walk away, resolving to find Bella and not to talk to anyone else she might bump into.

 **9**  
There are far too many sad stories in her life. She doesn’t need to add another one, she truly doesn’t. She can’t explain to herself, then, why she starts digging through all of Ted’s old books – the ones he had bought for Nymphadora and then packed away when they were outgrown.

Andromeda doesn’t need to add another sad story to her life, and she thinks perhaps by reading one of Nymphadora’s children’s books – with an invariably happy ending, obviously – she might cheer herself up?

Instead she finds herself sitting on the floor of the attic, surrounded by boxes full of things that she had forgotten they ever owned. There are a pile of books next to her, and she is holding one in her hands; _Dotty the Puppy_ , the title reads in large letters. Andromeda opens the book, turns over the first page with gentle fingers. She’s slumping over the book, feeling inexplicably as though her bones have been turned into jelly, unable to keep a straight posture for once in her life.

 _Dotty the puppy lived in a small cottage on the edge of the woods_ , the storybook reads. Andromeda traces a thin finger over the letters, trying to heat Ted’s voice reading these words out to Nymphadora before bed. It’s far too easy, and far too hard. Ted always read Nymphadora a story before bedtime, and sometimes Nymphadora would join in. Their voices in her head are so clear; Ted’s lower, richer voice, running up and down a scale as he reads the book; Nymphadora’s higher, childish voice, wandering up and down her vocal range, having still not entirely mastered the art of speaking.

There’s a wet stain on one of the corners of the pages, just above the rendering of the forest. Andromeda touches it with gentle fingers, confused for a moment before she realises that the tear came from her burning eyes and clogged-up throat.

She closes the book and places it on the floor, and then she wraps her arm around her knees and breathes shallowly. The tears come fast and hard, stinging her eyes and wiping wet trails down her face, causing her back to shake and her forehead to clack against her knees, and there’s nothing she can really do to stop them.

 **2**  
It’s fifth year when she has her next conversation with him. She needed a break from her housemates tonight. Everyone’s worrying about the upcoming OWL exams, which seem to be looming darkly across everybody’s lives and casting shadows everywhere, and there were people in her dormitory and the common room, so she grabbed her prefect badge off the sidetable next to her bed and pretended to be going out to look for wrongdoers in the castle corridors even though she wasn’t supposed to be on patrol tonight.

He’s just a figure at the end of the corridor for a while, but as she continues to walk he grows closer until it’s evident that he doesn’t have a prefect badge on his chest. “What’re you doing out?” he asked, falling into step with her. She should probably just walk away, but shows him her prefect badge instead.

“Patrol. You need to get back to your Common Room, Tonks.”

“Ah, but that’s a lie,” Tonks says amiably. “I was just sent back to my Common Room by the two Slytherin prefects patrolling tonight.”

Andromeda glares at him, caught in her lie. “I don’t need to justify myself to you,” she snaps eventually, and turns down the next corridor. Tonks, thankfully, doesn’t follow her, but she imagines that he’s watching her as she stalks away.

She doesn’t look back to see if she’s right.

 **10**  
She doesn’t know why she keeps doing this to herself, poring over old books she remembers hearing Ted read to Nymphadora. She runs her fingers over their spines, over the letters on each page, trying to remember the time that Ted read this or that book. Sometimes she’s successful, and sometimes she doesn’t have any memory of a book. She doesn’t know which one hurts more.

She reads them all – wizarding tales and muggle tales, happy endings or not – and then puts them back in their boxes, exactly the way she found them.

The only other time she’s brought to tears is when she finds a book of muggle fairytales, a collections of stories that Nymphadora loved. She can see the love in its cover, in the way the spine of the book has creases in it from where it was left open, the way the pages have been turned and stained with childish fingers.

There are notes on the inside of the front cover of the book. _Happy birthday Dora!_ Ted has written, and below that Andromeda had written _we love you, happy birthday!_ Ted and Andromeda had signed the inside of the cover as well, and irrationally, it’s the sight of their signatures together which causes tears to gather in Andromeda’s eyes. His is curly; she can barely read the _TedT_ which he knows it forms. Hers is neater, simply her name in cursive, and it’s marvellous and awful to see the way the ink has bled into the pages until the signatures are touching, like they were reaching out for one another.

She remembers that birthday, and she remembers the way Nymphadora used to keep this book on her bedside, the way she would insist that Ted read something from _this book_ every night and not settle for anything else. She remembers the smile and the kiss she’d exchanged with Ted as they signed the book and wrapped it in bright blue paper.

 _It’s just a book of fairytales_ , she thinks, willing herself to just put it back in its box. Her limbs seem to freeze, and she can’t. It’s so much _more_ than a book of fairytales; it’s Ted’s smile and Nymphadora’s laugh, and it’s the way she used to lean against the doorway to watch her husband and her daughter read a bedtime story together. It’s the electric blue that Nymphadora’s hair would change into whenever she was happy, and it’s Ted’s voice, telling a story. How can she just place that back in a box?

 **3**  
Sirius is heavily involved in her next encounter with Tonks.

Andromeda doesn’t even know why she’s surprised when her cousin runs to her and tells her that he set a trap for one of his friends in the Great Hall, except some sixth-year Hufflepuff got caught in the net instead, and would she help him get the guy down from the ceiling?

“Sirius,” she says as she gets out of bed, rubbing at her eyes and wondering which of the _many_ issues to deal with first, “how did you get in here? How do you know the password?” Sirius waves his hand and shrugs, and turns away with a squeak as she starts to change.

“Don’t you know how to undo the charm yourself?”

“I _thought_ I did,” her reckless cousin answers as she turns back around and starts dragging him out of the Common Room. “But the counter-curse I thought would work, um. It didn’t.” Thankfully, the Common Room is empty, because she doesn’t know how some of the other Slytherins might react to having the rebel Black boy in their common room.

“Don’t you know it’s dangerous to come in here?” she asks. “I’m not including myself in this assessment, but I don’t think you’re going to be welcomed if anyone sees you in here.” Sirius shrugs.

“I know Disillusionment charms?” he offers weakly.

“And finally,” Andromeda says as they near the Great Hall, “do you realise that it’s _five in the morning_?”

Sirius nods, and hugs her around the waist, and beats her to the next point. “I know,” he says, “I owe you one.”

“You owe me several,” Andromeda mumbles angrily as she pushes the door open. For a moment she doesn’t see anything wrong, until Sirius points upwards and she sees a figure in a net, at least four metres up. “Who was this meant to be for?” she asks incredulously. The figure twists around, trying to see who she is.

“Um,” Sirius says. “Remus.”

“Why Remus specifically?” Andromeda asks, but when Sirius only mumbles something unintelligible she gives up and starts working on the net. Despite herself, she’s impressed with the level of spellwork on the net. “Who helped you do this?” she asked.

“James,” Sirius says, his voice regaining a normal volume. She makes him tell her all the spells they used in the making of this trap, and stands on a table to try and get closer to the net.

“Hi,” the person in the net says, and she briefly recognises Ted Tonks. “Are you the nice cousin?”

“Nice cousin?” Andromeda asks. She looks down at Sirius, who is innocently eating bacon on bread. Andromeda had no idea that food was available this early in the morning.

“The little dude said you he was going to get his nice cousin,” Tonks says, unperturbed by the surprise in her voice.

“She is,” Sirius says around a mouthful of bread.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Andromeda says automatically, and Sirius makes a face at her. “What were you doing at five in the morning in the Great Hall?”

“I have a Runes exam first period,” Tonks says. “I _was_ hoping to get some early morning cramming done.”

Andromeda looks down at Sirius expectantly, and he obediently swallows his mouthful of food before saying, “Sorry.” He had the good grace to look slightly abashed, but Andromeda wasn’t certain that Ted Tonks would appreciate that, seeing as Sirius wasn’t in his field of vision.

“No problems,” Tonks says, “this is more exciting than Runes, anyway.” There’s a brief pause, filled by the sound of Sirius eating, when Tonks says, “You were in the corridor after curfew, weren’t you?”

Andromeda stiffens, and isn’t entirely sure whether to shout at him or not. She’s not sure why he remembers a chance encounter which took place last year. Sirius is still by her feet, though, still eating, so her voice is calm and even and might pass for normal when she says, “I needed a break from everyone’s end of term revision panic.”

Tonks makes an understanding noise, and Andromeda doesn’t know what to do with it. The only reason she’s talking to him now is for Sirius, she assures herself. She can go back to comfortably antagonising Mudbloods after this.

“Well, I had no reason,” Tonks says. Andromeda doesn’t like the way she notices his hands tapping out an offbeat rhythm on the rope beneath him. “I just wanted to walk.” Andromeda doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, why he’s trying to engage her in conversation, so she stays quiet except for the occasional muttering of spells now and again.

It happens so suddenly that Andromeda barely has time to step back; one of her spells works faster than she expected, and with a snapping of ropes Tonks plummets down from the now-broken net. Sirius, bless his heart, is fast enough to cast a Cushioning Charm (and Andromeda really has no idea where he’s learning such advanced magic) but it’s as shoddy as a fourth-year charm would be when a first-year was performing it, even if that first year is alarmingly precocious. Tonks still hits the ground hard enough that his surprised shout is cut off abruptly as he goes still, his body suddenly going limp. His head lolls a little to the side. Andromeda jumps off the table and checks for a pulse.

“We’re going to the Hospital Wing,” she snaps at Sirius, and starts levitating the limp body.

 **11**  
Everyone who comes to visit is advising to her get out, walk around, enjoy the rapidly cooling summer while she can, before it plunges into winter. She sees the sense in their advice; a walk might help her feel better, might allow her to brush the cobwebs from her mind provide her with a brief rest from this house that’s so full of memories. She get as close as standing in front of the doorstep once, teetering on the edge of the stairs. The door is open in front of her, and there’s a gentle wind blowing. The grass in the yard in front of her is only a little unruly, considering the amount of time she’s spent neglecting it.

She remembers a night when Harry Potter landed in her front yard, when Ted had gone out to carry him inside even though she’d feared it was a trap and watched anxiously as nothing sinister happened to him.

She remembers Ted walking down that path on a night when the moon was hidden behind clouds, a rucksack on his back and a brave smile on his face that kept slipping. She remembered the way he’d raised his arm to wave at her, and she remembers the way she ran out after him. Their lips had collided only a moment after their bodies had, careless and forceful and desperate. She’d kissed him once, twice, three times, whispered her love into his mouth; and then they’d pulled apart and neither of them were crying, not yet. When he’d reached the edge of the garden and Apparated away, that had been the last time she’d seen him.

She remembers Nymphadora and Remus walking down that garden path, waving back at her. She hadn’t run after them, but that was because she had baby Teddy in her arms; she waved instead, and wondered whether she should say anything to them. Remus opened the gate for Nymphadora, and the two of them stood for a moment with their arms around each other before turning back to wave at Andromeda and Teddy. Their faces were brave, just as Ted’s had been, and the smiles kept slipping, just as Ted’s had. Andromeda waved back at them, and then with a barely audible popping noise they were gone. That had been the last time she’d seen either of them.

Gently, Andromeda closes the door and slumps down onto the floor.

The next day, she only gets as far as staring at the door before turning away from it, and instead of going out she picks up a piece of spare parchment and a quill.

 _Dear Ted,_ she writes, trying to form her handwriting as gracefully as possible.

 _I miss you,_ she writes, and rests her head in her hands because will there ever be enough words to describe how much she misses him? There are seven million words in the English language, and she doesn’t think that any of them can describe how she misses him. Still, this is a letter, so she tries.

 _I’m going through our old books_ , she writes, a little off topic, and yes, this is more manageable, this is easier to write about. _I don’t know what possessed me to do that of all things. I could be going through your belongings if I wanted to remember you, but books have so much more to them. Most of the ones I’ve been reading are the bedtime stories you used to read to Nymphadora. I can remember you reading most of them._ She wonders how to add that she’s been crying over children’s books, and that sometimes the memories are too much for her.

 _I think it’s a kind of torture,_ she writes instead, _but it helps me to remember both of you, and I need that more than it hurts_.

_I’m having trouble going outside. I stood on the front steps and couldn’t move. I don’t know why._

_That was a lie. I do know why. It’s because the last time you left the house was the last time I saw you. The last time Nymphadora and Remus left the house it was the last time I saw either of them. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to happen when I do leave the house. Maybe it’ll be the last time I see myself? Maybe I’m just correlating walking out of the house to death. Silly, isn’t it? I probably will need to go outside at some point. People will stop pitying me and buying me food soon, and I’ll be expected to act like nothing happened because people don’t like constant grief._

Her hand is starting to ache with the sudden strain, so she finishes the letter quickly. _I miss you,_ she writes at the bottom of the paper, and signs it, and folds it, and places it above the fireplace.

She knows that it’ll never get to Ted, really, and that if it becomes a habit – and it probably will – it might start to perpetuate denial, but she also knows that writing everything down makes her feel as though the thoughts in her head calm down a little, walking around rather than whirling.

 **4**  
It would probably be frowned upon if anyone knew, but Andromeda visits Tonks’ sickbed. The first time she visits is later that afternoon; he’s awake, thankfully, and Madam Pomfrey tells Andromeda that he’d be fine, but he needed to stay in bed for a day or three. Andromeda visits to apologise for not catching him sooner, that was all, she told herself. When she visits a second time, she drags Sirius along so that he can apologise as well.

“No, it’s fine, seriously,” Ted Tonks says, waving their concerns away. “I missed my Runes exam, which was probably for the best.”

Andromeda tells herself after that visit that she’s done, she’s fulfilled her obligation to him, and she was actually being kinder to him than he deserved, seeing as he’s a Mudblood. But there’s a part of her which still thinks that it’s her fault that Tonks is bedridden, so she visits him again on the third day. He’s looking profoundly grumpy, but brightens slightly when he sees her. She can’t decide whether she’s happy that she has that effect on him or disappointed – after all, she is looking for some excuse to stay away, isn’t she?

“I didn’t think you’d come back to associate with me,” Tonks says. Andromeda doesn’t like the subtext beneath his words but can’t deny them, so she ignores them instead.

“You’re looking grumpy today,” Andromeda says in reply, sitting down with her Transfiguration essay. Tonks looks between the parchment and her face, and she looks at him, vaguely challenging him to ask her whether she plans to stay (she does). Instead, he transfers his gaze back up to the ceiling.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “I tried to get out of bed this morning and fell over, so Madam Pomfrey decided to keep me in here for the rest of the week until I regain my fine motor skills.” He sounds so grumpy that Andromeda smiles down at her essay as she writes about Knollwick’s three laws of Transfiguration.

“It’s a pity,” she says, “Professor Slughorn looked positively horrified when you weren’t in Potions this afternoon.” Ted chuckles from this sickbed and mumbles something about how Professor Slughorn would be more horrified when he returned to class.

 **12**  
A lot of the stories in the _Book of Fairytales_ were myths or legends from other cultures; Nymphadora’s favourites had always been of Anansi the sly spider. Andromeda can’t say that she’d ever approved of that, because sly spiders weren’t ideal role models.

It’s from this book that Andromeda first hears about the thousand crane legend – in Japan, if one folded a thousand paper cranes, one would apparently be granted a wish. This legend was told through a particularly sad story; a girl, Sadako, had been exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb and developed leukaemia. She’d started to fold paper cranes in the hope that she could make a wish (to live; all she wanted was to _live_ ) but she’d died before she could finish. She’d folded six hundred and forty-four paper cranes when she became too weak to carry on, the book told her. When she died (and she did die) her friends and family finished it for her, and buried her with a thousand paper cranes.

Andromeda keeps telling herself that she doesn’t need to add any more sad stories into her life, but she can’t seem to resist.

She sits down at sunset to write her letter to Ted; it’s become a habit, as she predicted on that first day.

_Dear Ted,_  
_I read an interesting story today, about paper cranes. It was in the book of fairytales we gave to Nymphadora on her birthday, interestingly enough. It didn’t stand out to me then, I suppose. It said that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, you get one wish granted. The actual story was about a girl with leukaemia, who just wanted to live. That was her wish._

_I know what my wish would be, I’ve known it since I read the fairytale. My wish would be for you and Nymphadora. And then I was faced with the problem of who to pick, if one wish meant only one person. You or Nymphadora. It’s impossible. I still don’t have an answer for it. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I almost wish I’d never read the damn thing._

_The sunset outside the living room window is beautiful. It’s mostly yellow tonight. I wish you could see it with me. I don’t think we appreciated sunsets enough._

_I miss you both, and I love you both,_  
_Andromeda_

That night, Andromeda dreams that the letters on the mantelpiece fold themselves into paper cranes. She dreams that they fly out of an open window and up, up, up, until they reach a land literally bathed in golden light. The cranes fly around while she watches; and then they reach Ted, who looks exactly the same as she remember. He opens the letters, and reads them, and smiles.

When she wakes up, there’s an ache in her heart and tears drying on her face.

 **5**  
After seeing the two of them together, Sirius conspires to throw them together in the most ridiculous of ways, as though he thinks she won’t notice.

“He’s a Mudblood, Siri,” she says tiredly after she’s destroyed the door of the broom closet that Sirius had tried to lock them in. This was the fourth time he’d tried something. Ted had disappeared down the corridor with a wave, and she suspects that he enjoys Sirius’ matchmaking endeavours a little too much. “Mother and Father are negotiating a marriage with Rabastan Lestrange.” Sirius makes a face.

“Then all the more reason you need to elope,” he says defiantly. “Also, my friends tell me not to use that word. It’s offensive.”

“What, Mudblood?” Sirius actually flinches at the word now, and suddenly Andromeda feels the need to reevaluate her use of that word and her life. She doesn’t like the sensation and pushes it down. “Look, you might enjoy being the black sheep of the family, but I won’t,” she snaps. Sirius pulls away, and Andromeda avoids looking at his face because she can imagine the expression of hurt that would cover it. She’s gone too far, and she doesn’t like it. “Don’t try this nonsense again,” she snaps even more forcefully, and stalks off.

Ted Tonks is around the corner, and Andromeda has to resist the urge to throw her hands up. “Did you hear that?” she demands.

“I wouldn’t have listened in,” Ted says, “except you were talking about me, so I made an exception.”

“It’s not your fault,” Andromeda says. “It’s just that –”

“I’m a Mudblood, I heard,” Ted says. “I hope you’re very happy with Rabastan Lestrange.” The face he makes is almost identical to the one Sirius made a minute ago.

“Thank you,” Andromeda says stiffly, and watches as Ted walks away. It had been pity which caused her to visit the hospital, she told herself determinedly. Pity and a sense of misplaced responsibility for the injury he’d suffered. That was all.

The only annoying thing was that she missed them both when they were gone. Sirius had always been her favourite cousin, she rationalised, so it was fine to miss him. But Ted Tonks was a no-go. As nice as it had been to talk to him while he was in the Hospital Wing, she’d seen the difference in how the family treated Sirius, and she wanted none of that for herself.

Finally she caves, and walks into the Gryffindor Common Room to sit next to her cousin. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It was an awful thing to say, and I miss how annoying you are.”

“Go on,” Sirius says shamelessly. Andromeda tosses a box of caramels onto his lap, ones that Mother and Father had sent from home. Sirius leaps up and hugs her. “You’re forgiven!” he says exultantly, and rips open the package right away.

“I know,” Andromeda says as the four boys start to eat.

“Have you talked to Ted?” Sirius asks. Andromeda raises an eyebrow.

“Since when is he Ted to you?” she asks. “No, I haven’t. And I don’t plan to.” Sirius makes a disgusted face at her, and she ruffles his hair. He yelps.

“You should,” he says confidently. “He likes you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andromeda says, and wonders when on earth it became acceptable to talk about boys with your younger cousin.

“Why not? His feelings matter as much as mine do,” Sirius says. The other boys are watching this like it’s a tennis match, eyes going back and forth between them.

“Rabastan Lestrange,” Andromeda reminds him. “Good marriage. Family.” Sirius makes a face again.

“Being the black sheep isn’t that bad,” he says. “Not as long as I’m not home, which I’m not most of the time.” Andromeda gives him a sceptical look. “Why not?” Sirius says aggressively. “It’s not like you _believe_ all the blood purity stuff. You’re too smart for that.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” Andromeda grumbles, and nicks a bit of caramel.

 **13**  
She starts to run out of food, and knows that she really will have to get out of the house. She’s trying to psych herself up for it when there’s a knock on the front door and she goes to answer it, simultaneously trying to push all thoughts about walking out of the house and death to the back of her mind.

There’s a young man standing in front of the door. He’s wringing his hands, and very tall, with the kind of innocent face which immediately makes Andromeda think of puppies.

“Mrs Tonks?” he asks in a nervous voice. She nods and then clears her throat.

“That’s me,” she says. Her voice is a little raspy from days of disuse.

“I’m Dean Thomas,” he says. “I – Ted – Mr Tonks and I, we were on the run together, for a while.” For a moment Andromeda’s face goes a little slack, and then she tries to recover herself, to push the door open wider.

“You’d better come in,” she says, and her voice is only a little unsteady. Dean Thomas comes in and Andromeda watches him, watches the way he looks around at the neat but so obviously empty house. “Do you want tea? Coffee?” she asks, reverting back to her upbringing of being the perfect hostess in her unease. She goes into the kitchen before he can answer, puts the kettle on and pours two cups of tea. When she gets back to the living room Dean Thomas has sat down on the sofa. He would look a little out of place, she thinks as she walks over, but the expression of unease on his face make is obvious that he doesn’t feel at home here.

Dean Thomas takes the tea but doesn’t drink any of it, only leans forward slightly, wrapping his long fingers around the hot porcelain.

“He saved my life,” Dean Thomas says, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. “He stayed back to fight those Death Eaters and told me and Griphook to run.” Andromeda closes her eyes, wonders what would have happened if someone else had made that sacrifice, or they’d all run away rather than leaving one man to fight.

“That sounds like him,” she murmurs instead.

“He was a good person,” Dean Thomas says, and he’s so, so painfully earnest that he breathes new life into words she thought had gone hollow long ago. “I – literally owe him my life. If there’s anything I can do for you –” he breaks off. “I’ll try my best.”

“What have you been doing with your life?” Andromeda asks. Her back is straight and there are tears glimmering in her eyes that she refuses to shed. “Rebuilding Hogwarts?” Maybe she just wants to hear a happy story. For once, she gets it.

“I kissed my best friend,” Dean Thomas says – not shamelessly, she thought, but not ashamed either. Just stating a fact. “He kissed me back. We’re living together.”

“That’s good,” Andromeda whispers as her throat closes up. Her Ted had given that Dean Thomas that chance. “There is something you can do for me.” Dean Thomas leans forward a little, and she takes a sip of her tea to steady herself. “Come back tomorrow.” Dean Thomas looks a little surprised, and Andromeda doesn’t see the point in keeping things from him. “The three people to walk out of that door last all died,” she says. “Prove to me that someone who walks out that door can come back.”

Dean Thomas nods, and there’s something like understanding in his eyes.

 **6**  
Their first kiss is messy, and she has to stifle the urge to run away afterwards, to run away back to her family and the flawed but familiar life that she had. Neither of them are entirely sure what to do with themselves. His hands find their way around her waist, and she reciprocates until their bodies are touching – just touching, breathing each other’s air and feeling each other’s heartbeats.

“Tell me why,” Andromeda says thoughtfully, “I didn’t leave you up in that net like my housemates would have told me to.”

“Because you didn’t want your favourite cousin to get in trouble for trapping a sixth-year in a net,” Ted replies. She can feel his voice vibrate through his throat.

“You do realise that this is strictly forbidden?” Andromeda asks. Mother and Father had owled her yesterday, telling her that things had worked out with the Lestranges and to expect a proposal from Rabastan ‘as soon as it was decent’, which probably meant as soon as they graduated. “I’ve been told to expect a proposal from Rabastan Lestrange.” She can almost feel the way Ted rolls his eyes at the mention of Rabastan.

“We’re teenagers, right? Teenagers aren’t supposed to worry about the future,” Ted reasons. The logic is desperately flawed – and that’s being generous – but Andromeda desperately wants to forget about real life, so she hums in vague agreement.

Ultimately, though, they can’t avoid the future forever. Andromeda allows it to go on for far longer than it ever should have; it’s just before the Easter holidays when she tells him that whatever they have, sneaking around and meeting up and talking and kissing and determinedly not thinking about the future – it has to stop. And she loves him, a little bit, when he says that he understands and that he’ll hate her family on her behalf. She lets out a choked little noise at that, and it could almost be a sob if she let it.

Ted pulls her in for what she thinks to herself is going to be their last kiss – it’s the same as a lot of others but different because of its context, and when she walks away to get her trunk and go to the train station, she refuses to look back.

She takes the train home, and Rabastan smiles at her throughout the Easter break, whenever he comes over. Cissy and Bella (mostly Cissy, to be honest) giggle at her and the idea of Rabastan proposing, and she tries her best to smile along with them.

Narcissa has already been engaged to Lucius Malfoy – it’s not the _best_ match, politically, because the Malfoys have always been seen as a little too eager to please, but on account of Cissy being a third daughter marriage politics don’t matter as much. And there’s the added bonus of the two of them having taken to each other in the best way. Andromeda watches as Lucius courts Narcissa, brings her gifts and pretty words, watches as the two of them start to know each other, to understand each other, and wonders whether she might have had that with Rabastan if she hadn’t met Ted first.

She doesn’t think so, but who is she to decide that?

She avoids Ted when they get back to school; it’s only three months until she’s free, she keeps telling herself, but she thinks that she has it wrong. It’s only three months until she becomes trapped in a gilded cage and promised to Rabastan, and there are only three months left before she has no control over her own life.

She doesn’t have a choice, she keeps telling herself, and Sirius keeps shooting her unhappy looks. He’s a second year and insufferable now, or he would be if she didn’t like him so much.

She leaves it to the last moment to jump ship. It’s the week after NEWT exams and just a few days before graduation when she seeks Ted out. He’s sitting with a group of his friends and laughing at something one of them has said, and she feels almost terrible seeking him out to involve him in her mess.

“Can I talk to you?” she asks. His friends gape, but he gets up and they walk into a different aisle.

“What is it?” he asks.

“It’s certain,” Andromeda whispers. “Rabastan’s going to propose the night we get home.” Ted features harden a little.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“I don’t want to,” Andromeda whispers frantically, clutching his wrists desperately. Her knuckles are white.

“And what do you want me to do about that?” Ted asks, almost resigned.

“I want to go with you after the graduation ceremony,” Andromeda says.

“Okay,” Ted says, immediately. Andromeda looks up at him in surprise.

“It’ll put you in danger,” she says. “If anyone finds out –”

“Are you trying to discourage me?” Ted asks her, teasing. “I said yes. I meant it.” Andromeda hugs him, and it’s only a quick movement of the head until their lips meet, too.

 **14**  
Dean Thomas comes back the next day, and he brings his lovely boyfriend with him. Andromeda smiles at them and makes them tea, and this time it’s done because she wants them to be comfortable and not because she’s reverted back to the teachings of her childhood on how to be the perfect hostess.

“This is Seamus,” Dean says. “Seamus Finnigan.”

“Andromeda Tonks,” Andromeda says, and holds out her hand to shake. Seamus’ grip is firm, and it’s nice to have a little human contact. “Tell me, how’s Hogwarts doing?”

“We’re nearly done rebuilding it,” Seamus says. He has an Irish accent, and Andromeda is endlessly delighted. She’d forgotten how much she adored Irish accents. “They’re planning to have a memorial service for all the fallen.” Dean looks between his boyfriend and Andromeda, obviously wondering whether this is a step too far, but Andromeda nods.

“When is this?” she asks.

“When the castle’s completely finished, so about a week or so.”

It’s such an odd feeling to have new life in the house again; Nymphadora had moved back in only briefly before moving back out again, and Andromeda realises that it had been far too long since there’s been anyone other than her in the house.

“You should come,” Dean suggests gently. “It’d be good to get outside for a bit.”

She doesn’t know why she listens to him, of all people; maybe because he was with Ted when she couldn’t be, but she nods.

She goes out the next day, to a small store off Diagon Alley. She buys meat and milk and eggs, and when she Apparates home it feels like she’d broken a barrier.

 _Ted,_ she writes that night,

_I finally went out of the house today. I went to that little independent food store we used to get food from. Apparently it reopened. Most of Diagon Alley’s stores have reopened now, actually._

_I can’t get over Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan. Every time I look at them, I have to stifle my horrible self, because I keep thinking that what if he had died, and you had come back to me safely? Logically, though, I know that out of two goblins and you and Dean, you were probably the only one in the group with any hope of keeping the Death Eaters at bay._

_But then my nice self is always so happy for them, because they are so in love, Ted, it’s almost sickening to watch. Is that what we were like? They watch each other, all the time, and touch each other in the briefest ways, and watching them brings such joy to the heart. And you were the one who made that possible, so I suppose not everything was wasted._

_The sunset tonight is a mix of yellow and red. The clouds look like they’re on fire. I wish you could see them. I think you’d like the yellow._

_With love,_

_Andromeda_

**7**  
She lives with Ted Tonks for a while, sharing a crappy flat that’s rented under his name and apparently only houses one person. She sends a letter to her parents, telling them that she was happy and that she didn’t want to marry Rabastan. It is the most honest letter she’s ever sent to them, she thinks, and there’s something freeing in watching the owl fly away. She sends another letter to Sirius, saying that she’d taken her advice and that Ted sent his regards.

She receives a letter from her parents the next day, demanding that she come home. Apparently they were covering for her, saying that she was desperately ill with a violently contagious disease but that the Lestranges weren’t going to believe it much longer and didn’t she want to see her sisters again? Didn’t she want to marry Rabastan, and didn’t she want to bring honour to the Black family name?

Andromeda considers keeping the letter, runs her fingers over the names _Narcissa_ and _Bellatrix_ , but eventually she tosses the letter in the fire, watching the paper curl and burn. She wishes she could have explained to them both – Narcissa, especially. She wishes that she could tell them that she’s sorry, but the life that she’d left behind wasn’t for her.

She and Ted keep their distance from one another, initially, after that kiss in the library. The two of them go through a month of living together before she kisses him again, and just like that they fall into a rhythm of sleeping in the same bed, of kissing in the mornings and wrapping their arms around each other whenever they can just because they can.

“Can you just answer this one question honestly?” Ted asks as they lie in bed together one night. He’s smoothing her hair over the pillow between them and she nods, disturbing the pattern slightly.

“Yeah, of course,” she says, her curiosity sparked. Ted doesn’t seem to know how to go about this question.

“This – whatever we have,” Ted says, gesturing between them. “Are you just doing it because you’re living with me and you don’t want me to kick you out?” Andromeda frowns, and he hurries on. “Are you doing this,” he gestures between the two of them again, “because you actually, really, want to?” he finishes.

“Yes,” Andromeda says. Her voice is so firm and certain that she can see the tension in Ted’s shoulders relax. “I love you,” Andromeda says, and she never gave much thought to the statement but somewhere along the lines of knowing Ted Tonks, it’s become true.

 **8**  
She tunes into Potterwatch every day now; someone had owled her the channel frequency and code, she’d forgotten who, with a note saying she might like to keep up with this radio channel.

This is how she hears about the murder of her husband; through a _radio channel_ run by boys who are barely old enough to have their own business.

For a moment after the statement she feels as though she can’t think, can’t breathe – she hears the words _minute of silence_ and wonders how anyone will be able to talk after this.

Suddenly, the weeks of absence culminate, and the words she’s been whispering to herself every morning, promising herself that he will come back to her – it all goes out the window. Her heart feels like someone’s taken a sledgehammer to it, broken it into small and tiny pieces, and she thinks that the world, by all rights, should be crumbling down around her ears.

Instead the sun is shining and there are barely any clouds in the sky, and the dishes are happily washing themselves in the sink, and Andromeda buries her her head in her hands and lets the tears run down her face.


End file.
